Noninstitutionalized Education Sociology Help

Noninstitutionalized Education
Much education is informal and even unconscious. Children learn a great deal in the home, 011 the playground, ana in the streets. Often this cancels out much that they should be learning in school. Possibly, television is the greatest noninstitutionalized educator. Byage 18, an American youth will have spent more time watching TV than attending school [Mayer, 1983]. Television offers fare that makes homework dull by comparison. There are some serious programs, such as Sesame Street, designed to. educate children. But most children’s broadcasting is cartoons. Under the Reagan Administration’s “deregulation” program, the Federal Communications Commis sion ceased pressing networks to carry non cartoon children’s programs, and by 1983 they had practically disappeared from commercial television [Mayer, 1983]. A diet of frothy, sensational television fare does ‘little to whet the appetite for reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the very least, it takes a realeffort to turn to one’s studies in a world which offers .instant pleasure at the “on” switch Other mass media newspapers,” books,’ magazines, comic books, movies-also make their contributions, positive or negative, to the. child’s learning. For some children, church is an influence, but when church and school are combined, well over half the child’s learning time will be spent with mass media “educators” who are not primarily concerned with learning outcomes.